Life Moving Too Slow For You? Try Instagram’s Hyperlapse Video App

Instagram Hyperlapse is the latest app from Facebook that’s hoping for a spot on your iPhone’s home screen.

Emily Parpuolenis/The Wall Street Journal

Instagram—like its corporate parent, Facebook—isn’t content being confined to just one app on your phone. Its second app, Hyperlapse, dedicated to shooting time-lapse videos that you can share to Facebook and Instagram (or save to your phone’s camera roll), just landed in Apple’s iOS App Store on Tuesday.

Since Hyperlapse videos show everything in fast forward, footage can be novel or nauseating depending on what you’ve shot—and how you’ve shot it. To make Hyperlapse videos less inherently annoying, Instagram built in some impressive image stabilization that tries to keep your videos looking smooth. The image stabilization isn’t perfect—it essentially crops into your video—but it’s important because any shakiness on your part is made far worse by the hyperspeed. And it does feel like it’s a notch above the iPhone’s camera app image stabilizer.

You can shoot up to 45 minutes on an iPhone 5 or 5S (though just 10 minutes on an iPhone 4 or 4S). That may sound like a long time, but it’ll work in your favor when you film really slow moving things—like a snail crossing a sidewalk—and then play it back so that it looks like it’s moving at a normal speed. So once you’ve shot your video—in either portrait or landscape depending on how you hold your phone—you can speed it up by 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 10x or even 12x.

The best part of the app might be just how dead simple it is to use. As soon as you open Hyperlapse, you’re in the camera mode. Press the record button and you’re filming. After that, choose your speed then save or share your timelapse. Unlike the original Instagram app, there are no color filters or other editing features in Hyperlapse. There’s also no Android edition yet.

As amusing as Hyperlapse is—and especially promising for unhurried people who regularly encounter tide pools, budding flowers or the Northern Lights—it feels like a feature that could have been built into the namesake Instagram app itself. But its separation is part of the point. Hyperlapse (and Facebook’s other spin-off apps such as Messenger, Slingshot, Paper, and Home) is as much about claiming a spot on your phone’s home screen as it is about having fun with your phone’s camera.